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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

A couple of more cluesticks on dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer

Since DaveScot has made an appearance or two in the comments here, annoying everyone he comes in contact with, it’s worth pointing out that mine isn’t the only cluestick that could be used to pound some science into him about dichloroacetate, the supposed “cure” for cancer that’s being “ignored” or “suppressed” by Big Pharma. Since […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Rosie O’Donnell vs. David Kirby on the “causation” issue of autism: Guess who loses?

Pity poor David Kirby. After all, he made his name by hitching his star to a losing hypothesis, namely that the mercury in thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. He wrote a book about it, Evidence of Harm, back in 2005 and has milked that sucker dry ever since. Most recently, his appearances culminated in a […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The Alchemy of Woo

You know, I really wish I could have made it to The Amazing Meeting this year. It would have been really cool to have a chance to hear in person such skeptical luminaries, such as The Amazing Randi, Penn and Teller (although I do concede that Penn’s Libertarianism does occasionally border on credulity for some […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Critical thinking and the scientific method in medical education

It’s things like this over at Over My Med Body! that show our friend Graham really knows how to make a humble guy like Orac feel the love: Big name bloggers like Orac and Dr. RW and KevinMD are all up in arms about how “medical schools are going the wrong way” and asking “Does […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Acupuncture for Parkinson’s disease?

Critics who don’t like my insistence on applying the scientific method to the claims of alternative medicine sometimes accuse me of unrelenting hostility towards alternative medicine, as though no amount of evidence would ever convince me of the efficacy of various alternative medicine therapies. Nothing could be further from the truth; I merely insist, as […]